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The illustrations below (pp. 224 ff.) show the course of the reaction time in hysterical individuals. The light cross-hatched columns denote the locations where the test person was unable to react (so-called failures).
The first thing that strikes us is the fact that many test persons show a marked prolongation of the reaction time. This would make us think at first of intellectual difficulties,—wrongly, however, as we are often dealing with very intelligent persons of fluent speech. The explanation lies rather in the emotions. In order to understand the matter comprehensively we must bear in mind that the association experiments cannot deal with a separated psychic function, for any psychic occurrence is never a thing in itself, but is always the resultant of the entire psychological past. The association experiment, too, is not merely a method for the reproduction of separated word couplets, but it is a kind of pastime, a conversation between experimenter and test person. In a certain sense it is even still more than that. Words are really something like condensed actions, situations, and things. When I present a word to the test person which denotes an action it is the same as if I should present to him the action itself, and ask him, "How do you behave towards it? What do you think of it? What do you do in this situation?" If I were a magician I should cause the situation corresponding to the stimulus word to appear in reality and placing the test person in its midst, I should then study his manner of reaction. The result of my stimulus words would thus undoubtedly approach infinitely nearer perfection. But as we are not magicians we must be contented with the linguistic substitutes for reality; at the same time we
